Could you explain the use of the preposition ''de'' in this sentence?
Hablo un poco de español
Does it indicate possession?
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Sign up to join this communityCould you explain the use of the preposition ''de'' in this sentence?
Hablo un poco de español
Does it indicate possession?
"Un poco" as an adjective is used to indicate a small amount of a noun which is not countable (for example, the noun "Spanish", as you cannot have 5 or 6 "Spanish"). Here is the entry in the RAE dictionary:
loc. adj. Con nombres no contables, denota cantidad pequeña. U. seguido de la preposición de.
This means in English:
With uncountable nouns, it denotes small quantity. Used followed by the preposition "de".
So, whenever you want to indicate a small amount of an uncountable noun, you use the phrase "un poco de" as the adjective.
You can also use the adjective "poco/poca" directly with uncountable nouns, but this carries the connotation of being not only small but also insufficient.
I am still a beginner in Spanish, but based of my general linguistic knowledge I believe it's a nice example of partitive.
partitive is a word, phrase, or case that indicates partialness
As you probably correctly determined, de in Spanish indicates the genitive.
Depending on the language, specific varieties of genitive-noun–main-noun relationships may include:
- possession
- composition (see Partitive)
- participation in an action
- origin
- reference
- description
- compounds
- apposition
Possession is only one of many possible concept expressed by genitive. In the case of un poco de the genitive is used to express the partitive, not the possession.
For better understanding of what possessive is, you may read the following summary.
Roman languages, such as French and Spanish, feel more urge to use partitive in places where it is not required in English. E.g. in French you cannot say "I want water", you have to say (word-by-word translation) "I want of water". In Finnish they use partitive even for marking tank trucks with water vettä ("of water") instead of vesi ("water").
They explain it by stating that "you cannot have all the water in the universe", you can have only a small portion of water.
The partitive is expressed by
Spanish is not a language with the special partitive case and they express the partitive concept by using genitive. So some usages of de are the expressions of the partitive genitive.
See also Is the phrase "un poco de" an example of partitive?.
"Un poco de" is a locución determinativa. A locución in Spanish is, according to the RAE:
"En gramática se llama locución a una combinación fija de palabras que funciona como una determinada clase (locución nominal, adjetiva, verbal, etc.) y cuyo significado no es la suma del que tienen sus componentes por separado".
Rough translation: In grammar, a locución is a fixed combination of words that works as a specific class, whose meaning isn't the sum of the those of their separate components.
"Un poco de" is a locución determinativa because it determines the quantity of Spanish you can speak. As quoted, the words that form a locution cannot be separated without them losing their original meaning, so instead of reading it word by word, the whole expression should be considered as a cluster of words whose meaning is equivalent to English "some".
Lastly, that "de" is comparable to "of" in "a little bit of" or "a lot of". So, the only difference between this post and the previous ones is that I'd say that the function of "Un poco de" is that of a determinante rather than an adjetivo.
No, it does not indicate possession. "De" is used to indicate possession only for nouns (physical things).
For example:
El auto de Miguel
Miguel actually has a car, so "de" is used as possession there. But you can't have "un poco de español" because it's something that doesn't physically exist.
In your case "un poco de" is an entire expression, which express quantity. I don't speak too much Spanish, just a bit. "Un poco de ..."